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Topic: Feed honey back to bees. (Read 3507 times)

I extracted 2 boxes on the weekend but managed to spill about a kilo of honey. I scraped most of it up off the floor and I have it in a bowl, can I feed it back to the bees and what is the best way to do it?

If you feed them outside, don't do it with a bucket. I have found that if the bees have to climb up the side of the container after they load up with honey, large numbers die in the container. Even putting a super full of spun comb has this problem. I turn the super or bucket on it's side and now have almost no losses. I prop the buckets, full of drained cappings, up just a little.Jim

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"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed."--Mark Twain

If you feed them outside, don't do it with a bucket. I have found that if the bees have to climb up the side of the container after they load up with honey, large numbers die in the container. Even putting a super full of spun comb has this problem. I turn the super or bucket on it's side and now have almost no losses. I prop the buckets, full of drained cappings, up just a little.Jim

Yes I've had a number die in a deep tub also that's why I was looking for a better solution.

Thanks for the link Yanta, I had read/heard somewhere that open feeding was illegal, I wasn't planning on doing that. I was considering that 5 of my 6 hives stemmed from the original 2 that are side by side and that they would probably have the same problems/ health levels, is that not correct?

You can plonk the stuff into a tray on the top of supers under the lid or there is a plastic feeder the size of a frame that some have used. there are little drip hole in the sided of the feeder that allow the bees to drain the contents. The feeder itself will last for many years. You can use to feed syrup over winter as an aside.

That depends. There might be a bit of drift. If one hive has a problem & the others rob it out then disease can spread.

If one hive has AFB then they can all be exposed. AFB is the worst case scenario. Other diseases are manageable but still a pain in the arse.

I'm speaking from experience. I lost all of my 8 hives to AFB in August. I didn't pick it up early enough in the autumn & it was right through them in the spring.

Failing to identify it early was my fault. I am a lot wiser now.

I don't know how they picked it up. Possibly from robbing out a hive in the scrub around my property. Looking back a lot of the practices that I used could have aided the spread eg putting extracted stickies back into any hive.

Allowing bees free access to honey in the open is a bad practice & I have never done it.

Unless you have more than one apiary you should try to minimise the intermingling of hive parts & material between those hives.

Bernsad, with the greatest of respect to our American friends & particularly JP you should consult the several reliable sources available in OZ. In particular the QLD & NSW DPI websites. Forums should not be the only source of your information.

That depends. There might be a bit of drift. If one hive has a problem & the others rob it out then disease can spread.

If one hive has AFB then they can all be exposed. AFB is the worst case scenario. Other diseases are manageable but still a pain in the arse.

I'm speaking from experience. I lost all of my 8 hives to AFB in August. I didn't pick it up early enough in the autumn & it was right through them in the spring.

Failing to identify it early was my fault. I am a lot wiser now.

I don't know how they picked it up. Possibly from robbing out a hive in the scrub around my property. Looking back a lot of the practices that I used could have aided the spread eg putting extracted stickies back into any hive.

Allowing bees free access to honey in the open is a bad practice & I have never done it.

Unless you have more than one apiary you should try to minimise the intermingling of hive parts & material between those hives.

Bernsad, with the greatest of respect to our American friends & particularly JP you should consult the several reliable sources available in OZ. In particular the QLD & NSW DPI websites. Forums should not be the only source of your information.

There may be info more relevant to Victoria however you can chase that up. I'm a cane toad living in NSW so I'l stick with those states.

Good Luck

Yanta

Hi Yanta,

Thanks for all the info, I'm trying to lean towards local knowledge when I can get it just because it will be a little more relevant to my situation and I mean no disrespect to our overseas beeks as I'm getting lots of good info/ideas from them also.

Sorry to hear about your AFB problem, are you back on your feet with bees now? Do you only return your stickies to the hive they came from or what do you do with them now? Does that mean that you never interchange frames between hives now?

Don't think I've been on the QLD DPI site yet though I've been looking at Vic. and NSW.

The general aim would be to set up a barrier system. If I only had two hives & certainly wouldn't swap frames except in an emergency eg no queen.

Say for example I was consistently disease free. If I had 10 hives I could treat it like two apiaries of five & only interchange between those five hives or any other combination you want. It depends on the risks you are prepared to take. I don't want to loose all of my ives again.

I'll be playing it safe for a while because I still have no idea where the AFB originated from.

There is information about barrier systems on the NSW DPI website if you dig deep enough.